One of the most amazing things I saw was, without question, the screening of the Wonder Women! : the Untold Story of American Heroines documentary.

I’d never heard of it before to be honest, which is hardly surprising as it’s an independent release (no screening near you? Organise one – there’s a link at the bottom of this post!). It’s basically a visual look at the intersections of Women Woman iconography and certain aspects of Second Wave American feminism.

Did you know that Wonder Woman was regarded by quite a few feminists as the ‘face’of Second Wave American feminism? Neither did I. Quite frankly, being a Marvel girl rather than DC, I’d always thought of Wonder Woman as one of the more tame, conservative superheroes. Didn’t she spend most of her time being tied up?

Image from Flickr.com user bbaltimore, used under Creative Commons.

I’m now going to recount my new and shiny understanding of Wonder Woman, as gleaned from the documentary through a vague haze of alcohol. Bear with me.

The iconography of Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman, it turns out, is fairly awesome. She was developed during World War II, and was therefore off fighting the Nazis (alongside Captain America? That bit wasn’t very clear) after realising that she had to go off and save America. Because that’s what awesome heroes did. She even had to win some sort of Olympiad before she was able to do it! And then she fought some Nazis, and some criminals, and in the 50s this was deemed to be DREADFUL. So she was rewritten as having given up her powers. During this period she found she wanted to make cakes, and opened a beauty parlour. OF COURSE. Because nothing says ‘superhero’ like CUPCAKES!

Anyway, along came Second Wave feminism, looking for a face for the recently-launched Ms magazine. And there was poor Wonder Woman, an icon in need of reclaiming. Off came the apron and on went on the magic bracelets!

SURELY IT IS TIME FOR THE 70S?

I won’t recount the entire documentary. Suffice to say that when the 1970s and 1980s kicked off, along with them came a whole slew of female heroines, from Cagney and Lacey, Charlie’s Angels and Bionic Woman, straight through to the live-action Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter.

Here, have a photo of her being awesome:

Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. Photo from Flicker user shaunwong.

Here are some other 1970s (& 1980s) heroines.

Cagney & Lacey. Image from kaksplus.fi.

Charlie’s Angels, 1977. Image from Wikimedia Commons .

Notice anything?

Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. Image from sabotagetimes.com.

Ripley vs Van Damme

The 1980s also gave us hyper-masculinity along the lines of Van Damme, Schwarzenegger and Stallone. It also gave us Ellen Ripley and (in 1991 admittedly, therefore just in the 1990s) Sarah Connor. There are a bunch of others. The 1980s were pretty awesome for strong female heroines, which is a sentence I never thought I’d be writing. When I first saw Terminator 2 as a little girl, I didn’t even know that women could do chin-ups!

Grrrl Power dominoes

As well as the iconography of Wonder Woman herself, the documentary looked at the development of Grrrl Power. We are taken through the original use of the term through interviews with Kathleen Hanna, starting back with Riot Grrrl, and its appropriation by the Spice Girls into something commercial.

I’m not going to depress you by taking you through the deaths of all the ‘strong female characters’ on television in 2001. I think those of us in the UK were somewhat sheltered through the impact of that, having our reception of those shows delayed by several weeks or even months. We therefore did not experience their deaths as the American viewers would have: one after the other, falling down like dominoes in 2001.

Back to Wonder Woman…

Like this, only AWESOME.

… and to her fans, ages 2–99. In the documentary, there are interviews with small children and the role Wonder Woman has played in their lives. There are interviews with activists – up to and including Gloria Steinem – and their perspectives on how Wonder Woman influenced Second Wave (and in some case Third Wave) feminism – and vice versa. There are perspectives on women-saving-women and the creation of Wonder Woman Day. There’s even a Wonder-Woman-on-a-string-with-motor, making her fly around and around on a child’s ceiling. How awesome is that? I want one!

Not your grandmother’s feminism

Now let’s talk about what wasn’t there. The film isn’t marketed as a history of Second Wave Feminism, nor even the (entire) history of Wonder Woman. That’s important, because the intersections the film is talking about are intersections with white, heterosexual, cis feminism. It therefore falls down significantly on the feminism movement outside of that pretty narrowly defined range.

It was also a bit dispiriting to not have at least a mention that the original name for Ms. magazine was Sojourner. There is also little mention of the subversion of the Wonder Woman image and iconography outside of radfem activism.

That said, the film doesn’t pretend that it is in any way comprehensive, or representative of all feminism movements. And, as a look at the history of Wonder Woman and how she was reclaimed in the radfem part of Second (and Third) Wave American feminism… well, it’s pretty awesome.

Frankly, it’s worth watching for the interviews with her tiny modern-day fans alone. There is something deeply heartening about hearing a child draw strength from a feminist icon, however corrupted and reinterpreted that image has been over the years.

Not convinced? Have a look at the trailer:

See? Awesome.

• In the highly likely event that there are no screenings near you, you can contact the Outreach Coordinator at Wonder Women to arrange one.

A more inclusive con?

Stephen B: “I first noticed how unusually inclusive Nine Worlds was about two minutes after collecting my badge from the front desk. Wandering down the corridor I found myself in… a geek feminism session.

“I was greeted cheerfully and given a quick intro to what was going on, and then left to join the various groups sitting around the (very popular) room at tables and in small lively seated circles on the floor. The crowd in this room didn’t know my views or that I write for BadRep, and I’m a straight white male – generally not a famously marginalised group – but I felt immediately welcome.

“In the next room along, Bronies were playing guitar and handing out cupcakes. They also had a rave DJ. In that moment, I suspected this wasn’t going to be a typical SF convention.”

Safe space?

Viktoriya: “I went to Nine Worlds and I wasn’t groped, harassed, belittled or condescended to. I felt comfortable enough to walk around dressed in my own clothes, and not necessarily the elaborate armour of ballgowns, cosplay or similar I’d adopted when frequenting prior conventions.

“More to the point, I felt comfortable enough to go around ON MY OWN. I can’t stress this enough. I stopped going to conventions because it had become apparent to me that I was paying a great deal of money to attend an event where it was pretty much guaranteed that I would be assaulted in some way, whereas daily assault is something most women can have for free simply by walking down the street in London. Why pay for the privilege?”

“Not being groped, forcibly intoxicated, called a cocktease, an uppity feminist, a silly little girl, or asked to kiss someone for the amusement of male onlookers – it was like a whole new world.”

“Also, I managed to convince my work friend to come with me to Nine Worlds. You guys, you have no idea of the stress associated with this.

“What if someone was a dick to her? What if she was assaulted? What if she hated it? Then I would be the work friend who convinced her to spend money on the the thing that was dreadful.

“So not being groped, forcibly intoxicated, called a cocktease, an uppity feminist, a silly little girl, or asked to kiss someone for the amusement of male onlookers – it was like a whole new world.”

Stephen: “It seems that every big convention recently has had a wave of harassment and bad experiences for some attendees. NineWorlds appeared to do things right instead, with a kick-ass anti-harassment policy and some seriously great content.”

Running a content track

Hannah Chutzpah: “It was an honour and a privilege to be asked to run the creative writing track. I spent pretty much the whole run-up panicking and convinced my everything would be a huge disaster…. right up until the second session where my longtime frenemy – author Chris Farnell – gave a talk on ‘Working the Time Machine: writing time travel so it makes sense’.

“We had a packed out room, with people hanging out the doors. Then, as the crowds left and I patted Chris and myself on the back, starting to believe this whole thing might work – this toy car, sent by the Bronies (pictured) whirred through the door full of cupcakes.”

Fandom and atmosphere

Stephen: “Nine Worlds is set up to include a wide range of fandoms and geekery, and all the different fans are welcome in the same space. There was so much going on, I barely saw the other Team BadRep folks.”

“It wasn’t just ‘here’s the gay corner’, so it felt much more open to (say) the B and the T and the Q of ‘LGBTQ*’. Which – as a bi girl – I found very, very refreshing.”

Hannah: “I didn’t get out to as much of the rest of the fest as you two, but the main thing which spilled across every room, hallway, lobby, breakfast bar and so on was the extremely friendly and welcoming nature of the whole conference.

“The only other geek con I’ve been to was the SFX weekender, which wasn’t unfriendly , but I also can’t remember half as much mingling (or half as many reasons to mingle) as there were here.”

Stephen: “I’m not a convention-goer. The friendly atmosphere and lack of judging at Nine Worlds was the kind of pleasant, safe space I’d assume any good con would try for, but from everything I’ve heard in recent years this one got it unusually right.

“I saw tweets from people saying that having dedicated LGBTQ* content made such a difference to their time there. Even the Bronies didn’t seem to get the usual derision, mostly because they were just unrelentingly happy and frequently gave you cake.”

Faves?

Hannah: The two standout workshops for me, personally, were fantasy novelist Tom Pollock’s creative writing workshop on Making Monsters – which generated at least one idea I’m going to be writing into a short story.

“Also, Emma Newman ran a workshop on ‘Fear and Writing’ – drawing on her own experiences as an author.

“Two takeaway things for me were her describing procrastination as a fear-based behaviour, and
that perfectionism is fear’s favourite coat. Emma – thank you. That stuff really spoke to me. Like, more than my shrink does.”

Viktoriya: “It was wonderful to have so many different tracks, and to NOT have diversity and inclusiveness be shunted off to the side with, “oh, well, we’re covering that in X track” – rather, you had panels on inclusiveness and discrimination across all the different tracks.

Hannah: “And since it wasn’t ‘here’s the gay corner’ it felt much more open to (say) the B and the T and the Q sections. Which – as a bi girl – I found very, very refreshing.”

Stephen: “On the Friday night I went to a swordfighting workshop with Miltos Yerolemou, the actor who played Syrio Forel in Game of Thrones.

“It was a lot of fun, and at least two thirds of the attendees were women (one of whom was you, Viktoriya, and I totally clocked your expression of demonic glee when you got to swing a very large wooden sword, which suggested you enjoyed the session!).”

Viktoriya: “I loved that there was a knitting track, and a My Little Pony track, and a board games track. It stressed the diversity of interests that are brought together under the fandom and geek umbrellas in a way that cannot be present in any single-show or single-theme convention.

“The fact that the ‘celebrity guests’ were actually there for panels, activities and workshops primarily, with singing autographs very much a secondary activity, was even better. I despair of the autograph factories modern conventions have become. Queueing for eight hours is not my idea of fun.”

Could-do-betters?

Viktoriya: “Well, OK, let me argue with myself for a little bit. I’m going to nitpick here, not out of anger but because the organisers have shown a genuine interest in learning from their mistakes and in improving the experience in coming years.

“So, accessibility. I don’t know what the experience was for those attendees with limited mobility, but I am relatively able-bodied and even I found it a bit cumbersome navigating the stairs in two hotels with only the few lifts.

“Ultimately, that’s what I’m looking for in a convention: committing to doing better next time when mistakes are made.”

“Some of the multimedia was a little difficult to engage with without risking pain – strobe lighting, very loud soundscape, and so on.

“Bringing in a general warning system (a sign on the door?) of strobe lighting for those affected by it, and doing a soundcheck before launching the sound and leaving it at whatever level, would be good.”

Stephen: “I went to the board games hotel only briefly, and there were lots of steep stairs, but then that’s the one used for loads of much bigger cons, so I’m sure they must have a solution in place?”

Viktoriya: “Well, big cons tend to have a like it or lump it policy. They have priority queuing for fans with mobility issues, but that’s about it as far as I’m aware. Individual cons may have a better provision, but I don’t know.”

“Then there’s the issue of diversity in organisers and session leads. Part of this is maybe due to the fact that it was the first Nine Worlds, but the organisers, session leads and attendees were overwhelmingly white.

“Take the panel on Problematic Issues – some odd things were said during this sessions, and it was also an entirely white panel (so discussing representations of race was rather awkward). I think it was trying to cover too many fandom issues: racism in fanfic and fandom, fetishing gay sex, writing male characters and ignoring female ones, reaffirming heteronormative norms, etc. In an hour.

“Contrast this with the Racefail 101 panel in the Books track, which brought together awesome writers of colour to focus on writing characters of colour, and seeking out writers of colour.

“Given the number of tracks and the number of organisers required, I’d suggest that the lead organisers work on diversifying the track leads.”

“With accessibility, big cons tend to have a like-it-or-lump-it policy. They have priority queuing for fans with mobility issues, but often that’s about it.”

“Finally, I disagree with Steve on the inclusiveness extended to the Bronies, mostly because in the sessions I was present at, they were frequently the butt of the joke.

“Fundamentally, I think it’s uncool to include something as a track (and therefore give implicit approval of its existence) and then spend the weekend being a bit weirded out by it. I don’t claim to be part of the MLP fandom, but I thought it was a bit harsh.”

Stephen: “I didn’t see the panels where Bronies were mocked, but I did see a lot of people commenting out loud that this was their first experience of them and they thought Bronies were awesome.”

Viktoriya: “I wonder if part of it isn’t a reflexive ‘let’s build a hierarchy’ instinct. Certainly there was that feeling at times at the fanfic panels, and some of the comments re: board gaming from attendees. The Bronies were the only ones where I heard panellists commenting on it, though, and there is some evidence that attendees felt a bit singled out.”

“What I do think is great is that the organisers of the Problematic Issues panel realised what had gone wrong, and have publically acknowledged it and committed to doing better next time.

“Ultimately, that’s what I’m looking for in a convention. There were a few tweeted mentions of positive and negative feedback (which, to their credit, the Nine Worlds twitter feed retweeted).”

Let’s wrap this up…

Hannah: “I think everyone involved understands it was a first attempt at a huge thing and the learning curve was, and will continue to be, pretty damn steep – but I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of it or more excited about next year.”

Viktoriya: “Since there’s a year until the next Nine Worlds I guess I’ll conclude with some general links on the inclusion and harassment issues – if you’re thinking of going to a convention and are concerned about safety, or if you have been harassed at a convention and want to know how to report it, have a look at these resources:

• Elise Mathesen’s experience of reporting sexual harassment here, including a contact and resource list for reporting it here.
• Carrie Cuinn’s experiences and guide for reporting are here and here
• Finally, the odious Ted Beale was recently finally expelled from SFWA. NK Jemisin has written a blisteringy on-point post on racism and misogyny in SFF, Beale’s expulsion, and the behaviour which led to it.

“Most of all, I loved the fact that I enjoyed Nine Worlds so much, I have already decided I’m going next year. No uncertainty, no hmm-maybe and oh-yes-perhaps. I’m going next year because it was wonderful. How can you argue with that?”

Everyone approaches veganism from a different angle.

Some vegans find their way into it through kindness and empathy for living creatures; others are swayed by hard facts and shocking images. Neither is more or less agreeable, and I suspect that in our day-to-day lives, most vegans use a combination of both when faced with questions from curious veggie or omni friends.

But then there’s People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA as they’re commonly known. PETA’s ongoing racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and fat-shaming ads and publicity stunts are frequently ripped to pieces online.

Plenty of veg*ns dislike PETA’s controversial tactics, yet many agree that at least their attention-seeking techniques shine a light on the fight and get results, regardless of the harm they cause to others in the process.

PETA are a massive organisation, and they spread a very clear message: animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment – but we’ll appropriate the Holocaust (see below), slavery, women’s bodies, homosexuality and trans* stereotypes to further our cause – and we don’t give a hoot what oppression we’re supporting in the process.

One of the *less* triggering unhelpful images one’s Ble.at dashboard can get covered in.

PETA aren’t the only platform for animal rights, though. Vegans rejoiced a few weeks ago when the beta version of Ble.at finally went live. For you carnivores not in the loop, Ble.at is a social network for vegans to exchange recipes, activist resources, articles, images and videos.

It’s similar to Tumblr and Twitter insofar as the primary purpose is to upload original content that can then be reblogged (“rebleated”) by fellow vegans. It’s a great way for vegans to connect on a micro level, by spreading awareness of local causes and events, and on a macro level by communicating with vegans on a global scale.

For the first week, it was mostly gifs of piglets, infographics of banana ice cream recipes, and cartoon avocados. With 5,500 profiles created within seven days of the site’s launch, the content rapidly improved: awesome recipes, powerful pro-vegan ads, witty one-liners and inspirational quotes promoting veganism were rife. But unfortunately, so was rape culture.

Due to the reblogging nature of the site, the same images kept popping into my feed: an illustration of an angry cow squeezing the bare breast of a lactating woman, a cartoon of a robot raping a blood-covered cow¹, milk being referred to as “rape juice” and the comparison between enjoying the taste of meat to the sexual pleasure a rapist experiences (below right).

Most shocking of all was a video entitled “Women forcefully milked in the street”. The short film documents a provocative street performance in which a lactating mother has her baby snatched from her arms by masked men with bloodied hands, who then tear open her blouse to reveal her bare breasts. The rest of the content is in the title. It’s absolutely horrific to watch.

Another less visually graphic, but horrible bit of viral reblogging.

When I mentioned my abhorrence of the casual connection between rape and the dairy industry on Twitter, a vegan pal asked, “What else would you call it?”

Well, the industry term for the bench on which female cows are artificially inseminated is often the “rape rack”, so referring to the process as rape isn’t a particular stretch. But the very fact that this is a common term within the dairy industry is a product of rape culture.

The pig factory employee found forcing metal rods and electrodes into the vaginas of sows is a product of rape culture. The flagrant disregard for the mental health of survivors by flaunting these triggering images to promote veganism is a product of rape culture.

By comparing the industrialised rape and infanticide of the dairy industry to the rape and infanticide of women and children, we are asking non-vegans to project the empathy for the latter onto the suffering of the former. The problem with comparing the dairy industry to rape is that we still live in a rape culture.

Unfortunately, we live in a world in which a teenage girl is gang-raped, photographed unconscious by her aggressors and is still blamed. We live in a world in which an accused rapist’s conviction is overturned because his disabled alleged victim did not resist the attack. We live in a world in which women are threatened with rape on a daily basis and are expected to laugh when comedians crack rape jokes. We don’t live in a world that cares enough about the rape of humans for the comparison to be truly effective.

By spreading these images of women being assaulted, we are supporting rape culture, and we are appropriating the suffering and strength of survivors. It is unacceptable to hijack, trigger and traumatise to forward a cause that has so many other convincing arguments to sway potential vegans into ditching the dairy.

Do we really want to be part of a movement that, like PETA, pushes animal rights forward with one hand and shoves civil rights, women’s liberation, LGBTQI rights, issues of race and body positivism aside with the other? That is not my veganism.

To paraphrase Flavia Dzodan, my veganism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. From dressing up as the KKK to producing pro-domestic violence ads, PETA are absolutely rancid, poisonous and unforgivable. It’s also unforgivable to use triggering imagery of women being assaulted to push the vegan agenda.

• By day, Alice Slater is a writer and bookseller from London. By night, she is a horror film addict who always keeps the lights on. She writes for Mslexia and Drunken Werewolf, and she blogs about veg*n high jinx at SmokinTofu.com

1. Ed’s Tiny Note: We’ve not linked these two as they really are truly unpleasant. They’re definitely real, though.

One reason behind how badly the Vagenda article was received was, I think, the authors’ attempt to address a relatively specific issue (‘Leave Caitlin alone, she’s working-class and hardly anyone else in the UK media is!’ – as if that isn’t in itself a whacking great elephant in the room, on which more later), and to address it in the more or less specific context of the kind of feminism they’d seen and experienced in the UK, without recognising that, well, feminism is really fucking big.

As explained in this post, ‘feminism’, even just within the UK, is not and never has been exclusively ‘a white, middle class movement’. The history, theory and practice of feminism is diverse, multiracial, international, and takes in issues of class, age and sexuality among others. Throughout feminism’s development there have been, as noted here, tension, discussion and conflict within the movement over how this diversity is represented, and, as noted here in 2008, there continue to be.

The concept of intersectionality is, in part, a way of helping to articulate this diversity. This was the very term Vagenda identified, oddly, as an example of unhelpfully academic language, when in fact, as the vast majority of responses to their article have pointed out, it’s one that’s relatively simple to explain by reference to lived experience. It’s also a term whose practical relevance is easily proved; in the immediate fall-out from Caitlin Moran’s failure to question Lena Dunham on the racial diversity of Girls, her fellow journalist Bim Adewunmi did a comprehensive and accessible job of clarifying why this mattered, both explaining intersectionality and making a positive case for it:

I am a woman, a black woman born in London to Nigerian parents, a Muslim woman (who does not wear a hijab or veil). I am educated and self-employed but relatively low-earning. These things, as standalones or collectively, define how I see the world. One often bleeds into the other so comprehensively, they seem almost interchangeable. This is, in its most basic form, what we call intersectionality: the idea that we wear a lot of caps, and often in challenging one wrong, we are challenging many. In reading that Moran tweet, my first thought was: “I cannot afford to take off my ‘race cap’ and focus just on the plain ol’ sexism that plagues the television industry; and nor do I want to.” – Source

Intersectionality allows the integration of systems of oppression – patriarchy, capitalism, racism, among others – to be identified, analysed, and challenged, and it provides a means of transcending and critiquing single-issue politics. The theory may be obscure, the practice surely is not.

There is an identifiable, and to some extent understandable, urge within some pop-feminist platforms to crusade against a feminism which they describe as too theoretical, remote and academic to gain mass appeal. The idea of a divide between academic and populist ways of promoting progressive politics is not unique to feminism; a similar debate periodically engulfs much of the left. How can ‘ordinary women’, or indeed ‘ordinary people’, be appealed to in language which will resonate with their everyday concerns and not alienate them by using words of more than two syllables?

But the first half of that question doesn’t automatically imply the second. Being ‘ordinary’ doesn’t mean being stupid. It doesn’t mean not having been to university either. Politics predicated on the assertion of an academic/middle-class versus populist/working-class divide are, at best, disingenuous, presenting as mutually exclusive what is surely more a question of priorities.

There is a difference between wishing to focus on ‘ordinary’, material concerns – the gradual erosion of living and working standards under the present government; closures and funding cuts to women’s refuges and childcare services; the removal of housing, child, and disability benefits – and assuming that the people affected by these concerns cannot recognise, analyse and talk about them for themselves, in language which can be sophisticated as well as rudimentary.

Too often, in debates within feminism – often valid and necessary debates – over how best to engage ‘ordinary women’, these women are implicitly othered, there to be appealed to and won over by more enlightened middle-class feminists rather than considered capable of engaging in the debate on their own terms and by themselves.

In such narratives, liberal commentators often employ presumptious ideas of what ‘a working-class girl’ might think of feminism, without having any meaningful direct experience of this on which to draw. Back in March, by contrast, the Camden New Journal writer Pavan Amara produced an excellent piece for The F-Word in which she interviewed a variety of working-class women and recorded their opinions and attitudes towards feminism. Her conclusion – that working-class women face preoccupying problems of poverty and inequality, and frequently regard mainstream feminism as remote and irrelevant – is the same kind of thing that Vagenda’s post was trying to get at, but far more plausibly expressed and empirically grounded. My problem lies not with that argument itself, but with the patronising ideas about class which seem to inform so many presentations of the argument.

It’s particularly galling to see an assertion with which I agree – that class is an aspect of identity too often left out of debate – being used in ways which can actually shore up negative assumptions about class. From Vagenda’s article:

Going into certain state comps and discussing the nuances of intersectionality isn’t going to have much dice if some of the teenage girls in the audience are pregnant, or hungry, or at risk of abuse (what are they going to do? Protect or feed themselves with theory? Women cannot dine on Greer alone.) “This woman does not represent me”, they will think of their well-meaning lecturer, because how can she, with her private education and her alienating terminology and her privilege, how can she know how poverty gnaws away at your insides and suppresses your voice? How would she know how that feels?

(I assume there’s been an unintended elision between secondary and university education made there, since in my state comprehensive we had teachers, not lecturers, and I’d be frankly astounded if any of them had been privately educated – they’d been educated, yes, but by the state, exactly as I was being. ‘State-educated’ shouldn’t be used as a synonym for ‘stupid’ either.)

Generalisations like this are often in danger of buying into narratives which see working-class parents, schools and communities as unable to impart education or instil political consciousness in the same way as their middle-class counterparts, and which present working-class girls as the helpless inhabitants of some kind of neo-Victorian netherworld, a perspective which is, again, less helpful than it clearly wishes to be.

What this perspective also neglects is that Women’s Studies, at least in the UK, was rooted to a large extent in attempts by women of generally less privileged backgrounds to question and critique the privileges of existing academia and to draw attention to neglected perspectives and experiences, including those marginalised by virtue of class, race, age and sexuality. That feminism in academia is now considered middle-class and irrelevant perhaps says more about the squeezing out of attention to and discussion of class-based analysis within it; the erosion of empowering traditions of adult education and of self-education through libraries and community colleges; and the pricing out at postgraduate and increasingly at undergraduate level of poorer students, than anything about education’s intrinsic appeal to and suitability for anyone outside the bourgeoisie.

The unhelpful aspects of these well-intentioned arguments are compounded by the fact that those who find themselves in the position to make them to a mass audience are hardly ever working-class themselves. The restriction of access to politics, media, arts and entertainment to those with the parental support or independent wealth to get them through unpaid internships, or maintain them in precarious freelance work, is referenced increasingly often as it becomes more glaringly apparent, but hardly ever with a view to how the situation might be changed. Caitlin Moran is frequently held up as a representative of The Real World on the grounds that she had it tough once upon a time, as though her current individual high profile makes up for the fact that there is hardly any mainstream media or political platform for those who continue to have it tough right now. To their credit, it’s not as if Vagenda don’t recognise this:

What feminism needs is more voices – a whole chorus of them. By all means, we can criticise those already at the top, but we should be combining that with a real desire to listen to women from all walks of life and their experiences: to actively seek them out, rather than waiting for the lucky few to claw their way into our ranks. Giving them jobs on newspapers so that they can write movingly and persuasively about the inequalities they suffer.

But what should also be recognised is that an intersectional perspective is vital in facilitating these developments, and that intersectionality affects the very focus on ‘ordinary’ concerns which these arguments advocate. The political climate since the banking crisis of 2008, and the imposition of economic austerity, has only sharpened the need to prioritise issues of material inequality and financial stability – especially for women. Much of the burden of analysing and opposing the impact on women of rising unemployment and the erosion of the welfare state is being shouldered by women whose identities mean they are under attack from several intersecting angles: as low earners, as mothers, as women of colour – very often, all three. Here for instance is Ava Vidal interrogating the myth of reliance on benefits as a ‘lifestyle option’ (and doing so, incidentally, in highly accessible language):

The promotion of a multiplicity of voices within feminism is surely better done in ways which challenge alienating ideas of what ‘feminism’ is, rather than in ways which risk entrenching these ideas by presenting feminism as an intrinsically white-normative and middle-class-normative movement which should benevolently open its gates to ‘others’.¹ I believe that a lot of working-class awareness of disadvantage and oppression is already informed by what we may as well call a feminist impulse, even if the women in question wouldn’t necessarily call themselves feminists.

Equally, while there’s nothing wrong in seeking to engage ‘ordinary’ women in feminism through using ‘accessible, populist’ language, it’s also not too much to ask for this language to be conscious and sensitive, free of condescension and stereotyping, and seeking to be inclusive through attention to race, ability, age and sexuality as well as class. The problems of the ‘ordinary’ working class are inherently intersectional: material inequality is intersected by racism, sexism, homophobia, and ageism, all experienced as real and immediate issues rather than matters of abstract theory. It’s just that this generally takes place outside a media and political mainstream which is increasingly the preserve of a homogenous and insular elite. Liberal condescension which pays lip service to issues of race and class is less meaningful than attempts to address the many failings in cultural and political representation which make it increasingly difficult for non-privileged voices to be engaged with on their own terms.

1. Ed’s Tiny Note: I think it should be noted that Team BadRep, who are (among other things) predominantly white, wouldn’t seek to claim that we always avoid falling into this trap in everything we do – almost certainly we don’t. But it’s important to try.

Today is World Down Syndrome Day 2011.

I don’t know how much you know about Down Syndrome as an individual reader. Don’t know much about it? Go and find out more about it. Think you know about it? Take some time to read and listen a bit more. Don’t be the person who scrolls on, eh?

I learned about Down Syndrome Day because I have a younger sister with Down Syndrome whom I lived with for sixteen years (I only moved out about two years ago) and so my family have lifetime membership of the Down Syndrome Association. I’d like everyone to know about it, though.

I’m not going to tell you a great deal about my family here because this is a short post – and because I haven’t asked what my sister thinks either about blogging on here, or being blogged about, yet, and not to do so would be at the least a bit cheeky. And also missing the point massively, in that “raising awareness” doesn’t mean I (an able-bodied person) get to trot out my non-consenting family on the internet in the name of Issues, or decide that me posting is better than actually getting they themselves on here to speak.

But here are some things to look at and read:

• Why disability is a feminist issue, from Feminists With Disabilities for a Way Forward. It’s a US-based perspective, but really, you should read it. Edit: this post too.
• A recent case of completely shitty education-based discrimination against a young woman with Down Syndrome. The words of her parents on this one struck a depressingly familiar chord with mine. They’ve had to navigate this sort of bullshit far too often, too.
• Mencap: find out more about what a learning disability is. Over 1.5 million people in the UK have a learning disability, so if you really care about activism and intersectionality of any kind, it’s worth your time. Seriously.

Will you let us in? A five minute film, covering 45 countries.

Read, think, share links around, and have a good week.